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What resonated with me was that the trailer’s narrator defined “our generation,” presuming that would be its audience, as being one both “repelled and attracted by violence.” So bluntly stating that we the public have such duality of tastes was something I found quite remarkable.

Thanks for your thoughts. They were well appreciated. I’m not sure the movie elucidated some of those details that you spoke of, but I haven’t seen it in its entirety for quite some time. Perhaps the book is something I’ll look into in the future. Anyway, I thought about Dave’s interactions with the increasingly unstable Hal in light of all the current research going on with artificial intelligence. We’ve got to be careful! And that baby at the end. I bet Kubrick had picked up a copy of the 1965 Life Magazine pictorial story on life before birth for inspiration when creating that image.

It was on last night, a movie that I’ve seen before more than once. I came in towards the end and waited for the commentary, but was disappointed because they didn’t cover the film’s specifics, speaking more about Kubrick himself. Did they choose 2001 to be part of the Essentials series because of only its special effects? There are several qualities open for discussion.
I started watching when Dave is passing through brightly rendered “dimensions,” if you will, seemingly borne right out of the psychedelic ‘60s and perhaps best enjoyed if you were a little high yourself. When he sits in his cockpit, the rumbling of the capsule readying to land somewhere deep, deep in space, Kubrick chooses a close-up of his face. It strongly echoes Jack Nicholson’s expression in The Shining which he directed years later, with the writer’s menacing glare permanently frozen in the snow.
At the end of the film, when Dave navigates an otherworldly, glaringly white realm, it all seems to be part of what we recognize here on earth, but yet it clearly wasn’t of this world. This eerie quality brought to mind a little bit the fantasy scene in Twin Peaks featuring the dwarf. Both sequences are a little strange, but in a way that’s true to the overall artistic vision. Although neither makes much literal sense in movies that clearly push the boundaries, each draws you in nonetheless, and is visually arresting.
When Dave ages suddenly in his space helmet, it could be a nod to Einstein’s theories of time and space - what space travel suggests about delayed aging with time stopping during travel at light speeds, rapidly returning all at once upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere. When he knocks over a glass at a desk, I thought perhaps Stephen Hawking himself referred to this when fleshing out his theories of physics for A Brief History of Time. For me, I just wanted to know what it meant when Dave dies in bed and is reborn as an embryonic baby gazing down upon our planet. It surely has resonance, with that gorgeous orchestral accompaniment embellishing the moment. I just wish I knew exactly what Kubrick was going for (Oh dear planet, if only we could do it “all over again?”) or even how it ties to the apes and the monolith and the space voyage itself. It’s a very long ride; I just wish it had been a little more coherent with a clear, unifying theme.